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Americans Arrested for Plotting ‘Violent Jihad’ Abroad

Associated PressUndated images of four of the men arrested on Monday in North Carolina on terrorism charges. From left, Daniel Boyd, Hysen Sherifi, Mohammad Omar Aly Hassan and Ziyad Yaghi.

Updated | 4:29 p.m. Federal agents arrested seven men in North Carolina on Monday and charged them with plotting to wage “violent jihad” outside the United States, according to an indictment unsealed in federal court in Raleigh, N.C. The full text of the indictment is embedded below.

The government charged Daniel Boyd, a 39-year-old American who traveled to Afghanistan two decades ago to fight the Soviet-backed government, with recruiting six young men, including two of his sons, to take part in a conspiracy “to advance violent jihad, including supporting and participating in terrorist activities abroad and committing acts of murder, kidnapping or maiming persons abroad.”

According to the indictment, members of the group practiced military tactics and the use of weapons in rural North Carolina, and traveled to Gaza, Israel, Jordan and Kosovo hoping “to engage in violent jihad.” The indictment also claims that an eighth member of the group, who is still at large, traveled to Pakistan for the same purpose.

A North Carolina newspaper, The News & Observer, reported on Monday night: “The charges are related to allegations that they helped raise money and provide training for terrorism operations in Tel Aviv, Israel.” The newspaper added “Federal officials will not say where the men are being held.”

The Justice Department identified two of the suspects as Mr. Boyd’s sons Zakariya Boyd, 20 and Dylan Boyd, 22. The others are Anes Subasic, 33; Mohammad Omar Aly Hassan, 22; Ziyad Yaghi, 21 and Hysen Sherifi, 24. All are American citizens except Mr. Sherifi, who is a native of Kosovo but a permanent legal resident of the United States. The Associated Press reports that “no attorneys for the men were listed in court records.” Mr. Boyd’s mother told The A.P. that she knew nothing about the case but that it “certainly sounds weird.” The father of Mr. Hassan declined to comment and family members of the other me were unable to be reached on Tuesday.

The Justice Department’s summary of the charges lays out several apparently unsuccessful efforts by members of the group to take part in attacks in other countries:

Among other acts, the indictment alleges that Daniel Boyd traveled to Gaza in March 2006 and attempted to enter Palestine in order to introduce his son to individuals who also believed that violent jihad was a personal religious obligation. Later, in October 2006, defendant Ziyad Yaghi allegedly departed the United States for Jordan to engage in violent jihad.

In June 2007, Daniel Boyd and several other defendants departed the United States for Israel in an effort to engage in violent jihad, but ultimately returned to the United States after failing in their efforts. According to the indictment, after his return to the United States, Daniel Boyd made false statements twice to federal officials about who he had planned to meet on his trip to Israel.

In February 2008, Daniel Boyd allegedly solicited money to fund the travel of additional individuals overseas to engage in violent jihad and in March 2008, discussed with Anes Subasic preparations to send two individuals abroad for this purpose. He allegedly accepted $500 in cash from defendant Hysen Sherifi to be used to help fund jihad overseas and later showed Sherifi how to operate an AK-47 assault weapon.

According to The News & Observer, one of Mr. Boyd’s neighbors, Charles Casale, said he was shocked by the arrest: “If he’s a terrorist, he’s the nicest terrorist I’ve ever met in my life.” The newspaper also reported:

To neighbors and friends, Daniel Boyd was a father who stopped his work at noon each day for prayer. Dylan Boyd, Daniel’s son, was a college student at N.C. State University who until last year worked as a clinical services technician at WakeMed Raleigh Campus. Mohammad Omar Aly Hassan was a newlywed; his father owns a Raleigh car dealership. […]

A spokesman at the Islamic Center in Raleigh said he did not know the suspects; an estimated 1,200 people attend Friday services at the center. Hassan and Yaghi both attended Al-Iman School, which shares space with the Raleigh mosque, according to former teacher Samar Hindi. Most recently, Daniel Boyd had been attending Jamaat Ibad Ar-Rahman, a mosque in Durham.

David Kris, an assistant Attorney General, described Daniel Boyd as “a veteran of terrorist training camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan who, over the past three years, has conspired with others in this country to recruit and help young men travel overseas in order to kill.”

Mr. Boyd’s history, as sketched out in the indictment, illustrates how complicated the American government’s relationship has been with Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan over time. Two decades ago, Mr. Boyd was reportedly a member of an Afghan-led faction that was then allied with the United States in the struggle against the Soviet-backed government.

According to The Associated Press:

In 1991, Boyd and his brother were convicted of bank robbery in Pakistan — accused of carrying identification showing they belonged to the radical Afghan guerrilla group, Hezb-e-Islami, or Party of Islam. They were each sentenced to have a foot and a hand cut off for the robbery, but the sentenced was later overturned.

The wives of the men told The Associated Press in an interview at the time they were glad the truth about their husbands had finally become known. The wives said the couples had U.S. roots but the United States was a country of “kafirs” — Arabic for heathens.

Hezb-e-Islami, or the Islamic Party, led by the Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, was one of a number groups that the United States supplied with weapons during the time Mr. Boyd was in the region. The group still exists and is still led by Mr. Hekmatyar, but it is now allied with the Taliban against American-led forces in Afghanistan. Last month, my colleague Adam Ellick reported that Kunar Province in eastern Afghanistan “is largely controlled by the Islamic Party.”

In an interview with The New York Times in 1988, Mr. Hekmatyar, described then as a “major recipient of covert American military assistance, whose aim is a ‘pure’ Islamic state,” complained, in English, that “there are people in America who are against our jihad.” In what might now be seen as a sign that the American alliance with Afghan holy warriors was inherently problematic, Mr. Hekmatyar told The Times in 1988 that he knew there were “people who support our struggle because they are against the Russians, not as an Islamic struggle.” He also explained that he had refused to accompany other leaders of the Islamic resistance who traveled to Washington to meet President Ronald Reagan in 1986, because “I was afraid America would compromise with Gorbachev over Afghanistan.”

While the shifting alliances in Afghanistan seem to have no relationship to the recent plots that Mr. Boyd was charged with facilitating, there was an interesting coincidence of timing. On Monday, the same day he was charged, The Guardian reported that Mr. Hekmatyar “has reportedly been approached with a deal by western intelligence agencies,” hoping to draw the Islamic Party back into a de facto alliance with the United States.

The A.P. reports that during Mr. Boyd’s trial in 1991, he accused the court of being insufficiently Islamic:

In 1991 in Pakistan, Daniel Boyd and his older brother denied they were guilty of stealing $3,200 from the bank. When the sentence was imposed, Boyd shouted: “This isn’t an Islamic court. It’s a court of infidels!”

When the brothers were arrested, they were accused of carrying identification showing they belonged to the radical Afghan guerrilla group, Hezb-e-Islami, or Party of Islam. They had become the first foreigners to be convicted and sentenced by special Islamic courts set up by the conservative federal government to impose speedy trials for so-called “heinous” crimes.

About a month later, when the brothers’ convictions were overturned, Daniel Boyd said, “The truth has finally come out.”

During Mr. Boyd’s trial in Pakistan, his wife, Sabrina, who is also American, was present, as were the two sons who were arrested with their father on Monday. At the time Zakariya was three and his brother Dylan, also known as Mohammed, was five.

Update | 1:27 p.m. As a reader points out, a North Carolina news site, the Cary Citizen, has published more photographs of two of the men who were arrested on Monday, which seem to have been posted on one man’s Facebook page.

Update | 1:31 p.m. Readers from or familiar with the Balkans, or really any region that has suffered through ethnic-nationalist conflict, will not be surprised to hear that news Web sites concerned with the former Yugoslavia have focused on the fact that two of the arrested men reportedly have roots there. The Sarajevo newspaper Oslobodjenje reports that Anes Subasic is from Bosnia and Herzegovina. The fact that Hysen Sherifi is from Kosovo is given great prominence in the lead story on the Web site Serbianna, which is headlined: “Kosovo Albanian Islamic Terrorist Charged.”

Update | 1:58 p.m. A fellow news blogger, Catherine Pritchard of The Fayetteville Observer, writes to tell us that she has just written a blog post based on a Washington Post article from 1991 on Mr. Boyd and his trial in Pakistan. You need to pay to read the full text of the Post article — which was written by Steve Coll, the author of “Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001″ — but this excerpt is available for free on Washingtonpost.com:

[Daniel Boyd] married his high school girlfriend, [Sabrina Boyd], the daughter of a medical doctor who works for the U.S. government, at a mosque at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She decided to convert to Islam just hours before the wedding and said she has never regretted it. “As much as I was raised as an American, I try to follow Islam strictly,” she said. Both Daniel and [Charles Boyd] worked in construction. Just under two years ago, Daniel and Sabrina decided to move to Peshawar to work with a Muslim relief agency aiding some of the estimated 3 million Afghan refugees who have fled to Pakistan because of Afghanistan’s 12-year-old civil war.

In Pakistan the Boyds shifted from house to house in Hyatabad, a suburb in the foothills of the Hindu Kush mountains beneath the Khyber Pass, which leads to Afghanistan. After a year, Charles Boyd and his second wife, [Debra], joined them. With two young sons initially and a third born in Pakistan, there were many adjustments. Money was short, hospitals were inadequate, baby supplies were difficult to find, and all their drinking water had to be boiled. Still, as they became increasingly involved in their new religion, said Sabrina Boyd, the hardships were more than worth it.

Through their lawyers, the Boyds maintain that they did not rob the bank. Their lawyers also say they did not receive a fair trial in the special Islamic courts recently established by Pakistan’s government to provide swift justice in cases of “heinous crimes.” Among other things, the Boyds’ lawyers have contended that police invented evidence against the brothers, obtained a confession from them at gunpoint and arranged witness identifications improperly.

Update | 2:37 p.m. Steve Coll, who wrote that article about Daniel Boyd’s trial in Pakistan in 1991 for The Washington Post, now writes, and blogs, for The New Yorker. He just published a new post on his blog, Think Tank, on The New Yorker’s Web site, which includes another excerpt from the article:

[T]his morning Daniel Boyd and his wife, Sabrina, also known as Saifullah Abu Laith and Umm Mohammed, are a long way from football games and homecoming dances. They are sitting in the dusty office of the superintendent of the Peshawar Central Jail in this swirling, violent city near the Afghan border. Here Daniel and his brother Charles await the appeal of their conviction on bank robbery charges by a Pakistani Islamic court, which has handed down a stunning sentence—amputation of their right hands and left feet.

“I guess we’re just living in a nightmare come true,” said Sabrina Boyd, who appears in public covered from head to toe in strict Islamic dress, her wide brown eyes peering through a slit in her veil. “It’s just unfortunate because it’s really breaking up my family. I hope this thing is over with very soon, God willing. We were very private people before all this.”

I won’t spoil the surprise (or Washingtonpost.com’s business model) if readers want to purchase and read the full text of that article, but I will mention that Mr. Boyd’s story, of a young American convert to Islam heading for Afghanistan to engage in holy war, seems to have been similar to that of John Walker Lindh, the so-called “American Taliban,” who traveled the same route about a decade later. In 2003, Jane Mayer wrote this article for The New Yorker on Mr. Lindh’s case.

Update | 3:03 p.m. The Washington Post’s Web site has just made the full text of Mr. Coll’s article on Daniel Boyd from 1991 available for free. It makes interesting reading both in light of today’s arrests, and in light of the current struggle inside Pakistan over the implementation of Shariah law. In October 1991, Mr. Coll wrote that the Islamic court that had ruled that Mr. Boyd and his brother should be punished with amputations had been set up by the government of then-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who may return to power in Pakistan soon. Mr. Coll reported:

The special courts in which the Boyd brothers were convicted were created earlier this year under a controversial constitutional amendment pushed through by Sharif’s government. The amendment was denounced by opposition leaders as a mechanism for political authoritarianism. Other commentators saw it as partly an effort to appease Pakistan’s small but vocal minority of radical Islamic religious leaders.

Update | 3:54 p.m. The News & Observer reports that “An unnamed eighth member of a suspected North Carolina-based terrorism group is at large and wanted by federal authorities, U.S. Attorney George Holding said early this afternoon. The individual, whose name was redacted from an indictment made public yesterday, doesn’t appear to pose a danger to the larger public, said Holding, the head of the Raleigh-based federal prosecutor’s office for the Eastern District of North Carolina.”

According to the News & Observer:

FBI agents are actively looking to take the person into custody. Holding would not name the person, nor describe his or her involvement beyond the indictment. That individual is described as a U.S. citizen and North Carolina resident who traveled to Pakistan in October 2008 to participate in violent jihad.

Update | 4:03 p.m. The Associated Press reports: “Authorities think the eighth suspect is in Pakistan, according to a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the investigation.” According to the indictment, the suspect went to Pakistan in October to “engage in violent jihad.”

On Tuesday in Raleigh, Khalilah Sabra of the Muslim American Society gave a news conference to urge due process for the arrested men, and she read a statement from Mr. Boyd’s wife, Sabrina, with whom she is friendly.

“The charges have not been substantiated,” Ms. Boyd said in her statement. “We are an ordinary family and we have the right to justice and we believe justice will prevail. We are decent people who care about other human beings.” The statement, which Ms. Sabra read to The New York Times in a telephone interview, continued: “Indictments always seem factual, but a rush to judgment is not part of the process.”

Ms. Sabra said that she first met the family in Afghanistan two decades ago, when she was working for the Red Crescent Society, a relief organization akin to the Red Cross. She said Mr. Boyd was in the region to train with the mujahedeen, rebel groups who were then fighting the pro-Soviet government. […]

In her statement, Ms. Boyd acknowledged reports of her husband’s activities in Afghanistan. “He was there fighting against the Soviets in a war that had the full backing of the U.S. government,” she said.

Below is the full text of the federal indictment unsealed on Monday. (Click on the box at the upper right to enter full screen mode.)

I sure would like to ask Boyd’s neighbor, Charles Casale just how many terrorist he has met considering as though he was quoted saying “If he’s a terrorist, he’s the nicest terrorist I’ve ever met in my life.”

Don’t you think the Times could have found an even more obscure place to bury this news item, as it seems to do whenever there is any kind of negative news about Islam and Muslims in America?

It is outrageous that the supposedly-unbiased Times lets its multiculturalist and victim-based biases drive its coverage of the news. Nothing bad can ever be even seen to be attributed to Muslims or Islam in America, no matter how blatant and insane!

Perhaps the Times, as a serious newspaper (or so it tells us constantly), should consider exploring the phenomenon of dysfunctional people who seem to find refuge and contentment in Islam – from the Bronx to North Carolina. Naaah! Sooo politically Incorrect and not in keeping with the Times’ ideological imperatives.
LEDE BLOG REPLY: This blog post is featured on the home page of The New York Times Web site, where it is visible to millions of readers — and this blog itself has as many visitors each month as the newspaper has subscribers. Nothing is being “buried” here.

This story is bizarre and something just doesn’t smell right. Government setup? The government wanting us to start freaking out about our neighbors? This is just another reminder of the dark days we live in, and the darker days sure to come. Not from Jihadists, token wackos that they are, but from our own government.

Why exactly did we let this guy back into the country in `92? The man “who traveled to Afghanistan two decades ago to fight the Soviets”. What?! You can’t just get on a plane and go fight for another country. At least that’s what the inside of MY passport says. I wonder what Mr. Boyd’s passport looks like?

#1 – “This serves to demonstrate that terrorism is not about any one culture or religion.”
Actually this serves to demonstrate exactly that the Islamic religion is very violent. The one common thread in an American, Pakistani or Kosovan Islamist is violence.

Notice the story lead shows the photo of the white guy? White “jihadists” have to be as rare as the perfect diamond but it’s politically correct to show his picture to make some political statement.
LEDE BLOG REPLY: No, race had no part in the photo selection or order: the first photograph is first because it shows the man who is the alleged leader of the conspiracy and is the main subject of this blog post.

And, at this moment in history, 99% of terrorism is committed by Muslims.

No rocket science needed to put 2+2 together.

Unless one has seen eco terrorists fly planes into buildings and kill humans.

Jeez. Some people bend WAY over backward to avoid saying that a Muslim could possibly be a terrorist :)
LEDE BLOG REPLY: Can you provide any evidence for that statistic? It is unlikely to be true that 99% per cent of attacks considered terrorism are committed by Muslims.

This also exemplifies the tangled webs American intervention and foreign policy weave and the blow back that it entails. One minute the muhjahideen are our allies against the evil Soviet empire; the next they are evil incarnate and “hate everything we stand for.” Where does the truth lie? It also boggles the mind when U.S. administrations state “we will never negotiate with terrorists” when that is exactly what we’re doing in Afghanistan and did in Iraq to finally quiet the violence between rival tribes. What factors determine who is a terrorist and when is it OK to negotiate rather than demonize?

The appeal of Islam has astonished me but even more so is the appeal of (I believe) distorted teaching of the Islamic disciplines – an all-american Daniel Boyd could be converted to terrorist?! It’s time that moderate Muslims stand up and propagate the real teachings of Islam. Most of us would choose to believe that Islam is a religion of peace. But in our society we just don’t hear too many of them.

“The government charged Daniel Boyd, a 39-year-old American who traveled to Afghanistan two decades ago to fight the Soviets…”

IT was the American government that funded Osama to train these types of troops in terrorist aspects to unleash on our former Soviet enemies. Its called blow back, and the ironic theme here is twenty years ago these men overseas would be called by the American ‘media’ ‘freedom fighters’.

I recall a movie with Chevy Chase and Dan Akryod called Spies Like Us that goes into this briefly. “they’re our allies they’re Afghani freedom fighters’…

The American intelligence agency sets up these rouge militant elements at the start that seem to be our first line of defense in our misused and misguided foreign policy overseas. Then we train them in paramilitary and ‘terrorist’ techniques and after we’re done with them pull all American funding and twenty years later start bombing the hell out of their women and children. No wonder why these people are angry…

The whole ideology of the foreign policy is flawed and incredibly destructive and has been since after WWII when American intelligence installed the Sha in Iran in the 1950s. Our meddling in South America with horrible foreign and oppressive dictators to ‘fight the war on drugs’ has not only eradicated democracy in these countries, it has devastated the local citizens, and ESCLATED this war on drugs. Because again these brutal dictators that are ‘installed’ by American intelligence agencies turn a sympathetic ear to these drug warlords as soon as the US stops giving them money. Why? Because these drug warlords start paying more….

Its a shame this has to involve our own citizens, but we need to being and have a proper historic ideology on these misrepresentations and short sided history lessons.

The American people did not do this, nor the ideology of American Constitutional government, nay but small controlled groups within the intelligence agency with good intentions gone asunder.

We American’s need to respect our own rules of law, protect our own country before we protect others.

American’s a so focused on the leaky faucet in their bathroom while they look upon their house burning down and thieves looting it.

#11: “Actually this serves to demonstrate exactly that the Islamic religion is very violent.”

Seriously? You don’t see the general bias in your statement? Trek back through the history books and check out the Crusades for a proper ying-yang to organized religion and its historical record of violence and oppression.

Boyd was allowed back into the US after fighting in Afghanistan because he was fighting against the Soviets aka a pro-american agenda. Why is it that people often ignore history in order to advance their own prejudice. The conflict in Afghanistan has spanned for so long because there has been foreign involvement since the Russian invasion in the 1970s.

Also, it’s truly amazing how people are getting worked up over the fact that ‘white’ man’s picture is being shown first. Because obviously every terrorist out there is a dark skinned bearded man. Way to stereotype.

I continue to be amazed at the lack of public revoltion by the ” normal peace loving Islamic Community” when these “small groups of Islamic jihadist” act as they are trained to in the name of their Allah. Could it be that maybe they are not a small group but that that truly is the way of Islam? Mind you I think the Irgun , Hamas etc are all in the same vile boat.

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The Lede is a blog that remixes national and international news stories -- adding information gleaned from the Web or gathered through original reporting -- to supplement articles in The New York Times and draw readers in to the global conversation about the news taking place online.

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